


no god he's ever known looks quite like this

by fuckin_rodent



Series: who's the ghost here? [2]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Changing Tenses, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Hades makes a cameo, Immortality, LOTS of Questions, M/M, Nico di Angelo is a Mess, No Plot/Plotless, No answers, Percy Jackson is a Mess, Percy demands a television and like never watches it, Power Imbalance, dont worry about it, sort of Angst and Hurt/Comfort, vague references to the occult
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-03-31 00:31:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19038706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuckin_rodent/pseuds/fuckin_rodent
Summary: No, it's not Elysium, or Asphodel, or any kind of death Percy had in mind. He's never heard of souls being lead to a shack, lost in the seams of time, wherein waits a kid who's lost years of his life to the void in his pockets. Still, Percy isn't opposed. His not-life seems to be turning out for the better.“Hey Nico?”“Yes Percy?”They stare for a moment. “Are you afraid to buy new clothes because you don't want to see how much you've changed?”“W-What kind of question is that?”Percy shrugs. “Well, are you?”





	no god he's ever known looks quite like this

Percy's life has never been easy. It was the equivalent of a third grade presentation in front of all your peers, and fucking up every word in every line, and eventually falling into a jumbled mess of chaos. What could've been something of a B- lay wayside to the fucking embellished carbuncle the Fates handed to him. Puss seeps from the wound; his life.

Not that there hasn't been anything for him to be thankful for. His mother, firstly and foremost. Gods, Percy loved his mother so much. So fucking much. More than anything imaginable. She was the only god in his child-eyes; she was the strength he admired to grow into. Turns out that was null. Percy couldn't ever reach the same strength his mother carries. (The tenses are starting to get confusing.) Even in his betrayal, she is strong. Was strong. Will continue to be strong.

He just wasn't strong enough.

Curse of Achilles be damned.

Because in the end, gods and mortals, monsters and men – why does he care? So much violence. Bloodshed, the weighty familiarity of that _fucking sword_ in his hand. None of it was worth it, nothing is worth it, not when Annabeth stared into him with her tragic eyes and she lays her worth in clear words: true. _GIVE UP THE GHOST, PERCY_. But what ghost? The kid he was supposed to protect? All the people he fucking lost? All the people he _failed?_

That's when the eyes started following him everywhere. Big, small, a medley of colors. Familiar. Foreign. Demigods all the same, those he's lost and those he's failed, haunting him again and again. The voices started to make him flinch. From Tartarus. From the Biblical hell turned real. Percy couldn't/cant/won't breathe without his hands shaking. Whispering constantly. ( _They're watching you, they're judging you, you know they don't want you here, you_ _ **disgrace**_ _-_ ) It left him drifting. Physically. Mentally.

Annabeth didn't appreciate his emotional distance. But she couldn't say much. Her ways of coping were exactly this: books, plans, rulers, architecture, waspish tongue. He doesn't remember the last time he shared a bed with her.

No, he does. Fresh from hell; shaking, stuttering, screaming, and that night he'd held her so close her ribs creaked in the silence. She hadn't seemed to care, then. Now? Now it's _trapping_ and she _just can't do it anymore, Percy, you have to understand._ But he didn't understand. This was his soulmate. His true love. The love of his life; his stars, his sun, his whole world. Percy was her valiant Atlas. The rock, the shoulder, the confidant.

All of it just – gone.

Poof. Meaningless.

Suddenly their history didn't matter. She was more concerned about his _mental health_ and his _twitching_ and, “Don't you think it'd be good to talk to a professional? There's gotta be somebody you can talk to, right?” As long as it wasn't her. As long as he didn't cry to Annabeth. But there was nothing wrong. NOTHING. WRONG.

He's fine. Death is treating him kinder than fucking anything else is. Death comes in the form of a boy too old to be a boy, but a boy he is...and always will be, apparently. ( _You always knew he'd abandon you for this. Power-greedy, deluded, son of a -_ ) Nico makes him hurt. It's a different hurt to what Annabeth gave him. Different to the worried looks, the whispering and gossip behind his back.

He took himself out before they could do it for him.

It's just easier that way. Why be cheated like that?

Percy's soul has evaded the Doors, somehow. He's not sure how. Doesn't care for semantics. He'd rather be roaming Asphodel, sure, fucking mindless and free. No whispering, no threats, no _hurt_. But that's not how the Fates want this to go. Percy festers like a frothing meat-bag.

But in his wandering, Percy was drawn along. It's in this thread connected to the inside of his wrist. He wasn't sure if it was real at first. But it's a fine thread. Reminds him of Annabeth's hair. Golden, silken; gossamer and grievous. The other end of the thread...he didn't know where it went. It seemed infinite. Ongoing, never stopping – and honestly, that's what he fucking needed. A walk to clear his head. A path to follow: mindless. Following the thread felt like muscle memory. He'd had to walk. Even as a ghost, as something insubstantial, he'd walked. Will walk. It's not like in the movies.

He felt so _weak_.

(Because he is.)

For a while, he'd been unbelieving of this fact. That there was something at the end of the line. So why had he followed? Why had he kept trudging? _All the way across the country_. It took too long. It took a week; impossible. Time felt warped. Was it a month or a millennia? ( _You're as fucking paranoid as they said you were_.) Each step felt like it was encased in cement. Like grappling through Tartarus again. And _gods,_ when he crossed the north-south difference, he thought he really had entered HELL.

So hot. Sweltering, and his shoes, where did his shoes go? An ache starts/started/continues in his head. Migraine. Like when your brain swells too much. Splinters your skull from the inside out. Egregious.

What confuses him still was the solitude. Even through all the cities he wandered, all the people that fucking brush through him, Percy had been so alone. On a different plane entirely. Not even another ghost. It'd been whimsical and warring all at once. This is the quietude he wanted. Right? _Right?_

No no no, he needed somebody to talk to, not this _isolation_ , this huckery _loneliness_. His skin itched, but technically he doesn't have any skin _to_ itch. His eyes pricked, but _he doesn't have any eyes_. How does this work? How does he exist? _Does_ he exist? (No, probably not, a figment of his own imagination. A dream. But no, the water in his lungs was proof, and not even deities could save him then.)

There are/were/will be moments where he indulges the voices. It'll say something, and he'll whip to look over his shoulder. Nothing, usually, but the eyes blink from the undergrowth. That's when his hands shake. Tremble, curl into fists. Anger blooms in his chest; righteous, combusting, too hot for his water-bodied self. That's why the flames had consumed him.

That's what he likes to think. He's merely water vapor. Wandering across scorched desert and baked ground. The animals hate(d) him. When the small, sand dune dogs started appearing in the wasteland, they all screamed at him. Screamed, contorted, wormed away. (It was in a similar fashion that Bianca had fucking pretzel'd in the machinery.) Somewhere sang in gospel hymns and godawful harmonies deep inside him. That nestled place between his breastbone and heart. Did he even have those anymore? That place sang regardless. Warm, seeping through his waterlogged core. Made him feel _real_. For a second, the eyes turn from him, the voices cease.

It all correlated: _**ANGEL OF VICTORY, UNDERMINED DEATH, LOVE'S MONSTER**_.

In simpler terms: _**THE BOY HE FAILED, VICTORIOUS GODLING , ANGEL TEARS.**_

Nico di Angelo. The barren wasteland suits him. It's an ironic take. Satirical, because Nico's always been a little too self-aware. Maybe that comes from the near-century he's been alive. Maybe from volition. Maybe from loss. But Percy keeled over and died from laughter when he watched the wrist-thread lead to a ramshackle shack over the dunes.

Where was he now? California? Arizona? Mexico? The in-between of worlds? This place is a realm all in itself. Percy's heard of _Night Vale_ , but this...is Nico's home.

He'd stood/standing/stands there for countless hours. On the crest of some land formation. Mountainous but not quite. Solid rock under his feet. Dusty. Gritty. But the breezes felt like they came from the ocean. Whipping his hair back and forth, leaving his cheeks wind-cut, it felt real. He felt real. And the eyes stared at the shadows creeping for the incline.

He'd lingered long enough to watch the coyotes scream, the occasional lizard to scamper by. The trees are strange here. They twisted and looked prickly; pine needles bursting on the very ends of branches. Percy had felt uncertainty drip from them. A fear in them. But that had referenced the idea of them being _sentient_ , of them being _dryads_ , which made Percy stop caring.

He's fucking done with magic.

He's fucking done with deities.

He'll remain a goddamn myth.

All hesitation had drained from him. The thread in his wrist shone brightly, golden-blue, and _tugged_. It sent a sharp shock smattering through his senses. In lieu of confusion, Percy understood. For once. He understood. This is where he was meant to be, is meant to remain.

Nico had changed so much. When the door pried itself open, Percy's not sure what he expected. Maybe to look _down_ , to see charcoal eyes filled with gasoline. Maybe to get punched. Maybe to immediately vanish. Darkness drips/dripped from each roof-tile. The porch steps coughed up the remains of Nico's innocence. Percy had expected to see a ten year old. (Percy will never relinquish the image of agonized tears and the sound of a shriek piercing his spine.) Percy received none of that.

Where there should be anger, there had been the fuzziness of a just-awoken teenager. Shirtless, jeans that were wrinkled and hugged low on his hips. Domestic. Like he'd been up all night studying, and got woken up by a sweet kiss and a cup of coffee. Percy thought he was staring at a stranger.

But no. His wrist-thread lead him here. The other end was bound somewhere between Nico's collar bones, at the base of his throat. (There were numerous other threads leading to that point, too. Uncountable hundreds. But Percy only blinked, and once again; it was only his thread knotted there.)

Percy's world fell apart. Briefly, but baffling.

Where did that aching little boy run off to?

What stood before him was a young man.

But there are qualities Percy recognized/recognizes. The sharpness of his eyes, the dark purplish bruises under them, the ivory complexion and the mercurial fix to his mouth. How his hair is untamed, even if it's cut short, curling and dusting his ears. Percy had been overwhelmed for a moment. A long moment. He was frozen in molasses, with the voices screaming – demanding he move, demanding he sink to his knees, but _no, because Percy lost faith in those gods_. (But Nico doesn't belong to those gods. Percy hears/heard the stories. “Attacked one of his own.” Except, Cupid has never been kind, and Nico has been whittled into a crueler kind of commination.) The eyes had blinked; revering.

Percy still doesn't understand it. How the words slipped so easily from his mouth. A calm had been splashed over his being. Cooling the rage in his chest. “You look like you've seen a ghost,” He gasped. It'd felt like a gasp, still does, because it'd been torn from his throat in something so casual.

Nico had been expecting him.

It's just something Percy knew.

Intuition or some gross fuckery of Fate, Nico knew. Nico had been waiting for this. Inevitability. Much to both their chagrin. Except, Percy was piping hot with this information. He'd hated every second of it balefully. Close to his heart, raw and true. He'd hated that Nico was distended. But Nico is/was/will always be cold. His displeasure was ice trickling down his spine, and silent. Percy would've mistaken it for _acceptance_ if he hadn't known better. But he knows better. At least, he thinks he does. ( _You need to be prepared; he's going to stab you in the back just like_ _ **they**_ _did, and you'll be dead twice._ )

So, an hour later. Sun, atmosphere, tension; all soft and warm. It feels surreal. Percy feels real. Solid. Stable. Substantial. Nico roams around in shades of devil-may-care indolence. He's tense in the shoulders, feet light on the floorboards. He's a ghost in his own home. Percy feels something twist in his gut.

Percy's come to the consensus of: spartan minimalism. The inside of this cabin-reminiscence is easily countable on his ten fingers. He'll have fingers left over. Couch. Table and chair. Kitchenette. Flower boxes. Bed. Fairy lights. Four fingers left over. That is, if he's excluding the shadowy figures that make themselves at home in the nooks and crannies, and the occult jargon spilling from a void-corner. And Percy definitely excludes those.

The fairy lights look like a last-ditch effort to make the place homely. They hang, colored a pinkish peach, and the wire connecting them is almost indistinguishable. They're cute, but creepy in equal fashion. Nico continues to tread lightly with his bare feet. It's like he's afraid to make a disturbance in his own home. ( _The shadows are closing in, they're going to take you, going to_ _ **eat you alive**_ -) Deep breath. Not much has been said since he stepped inside. It was like walking from one realm to another. Shadowtraveling, without the nausea, without the darkness, without the marveling dulia of Nico's abilities in the aftermath. In that sense, it's more like the whim of a god throwing him across dimensions. Percy can't muster up the ire for that one.

He's so tired. But not. Rejuvenated, oddly, in the presence of this...being. He can't put a finger on it. Nico radiates too much power, but he's not a god, never will be nor wants to be.

It leaves a sandpaper taste in the back of his mouth. It's an aura. Around Nico's dark, all-encompassing, shifting, intangible aura of death, something infringes in unknown colors. Like the tassels on the end of a scarf. Unimportant, really. But it makes Percy _itch_.

Something shifts in the corner of his vision. Another shadow. It twitches, ugly-like and ghastly, and something resembling a head whirls to look at him. Percy maintained eye-contact with it. It shriveled, and twists; a low rumbling comes from it. Then Nico snaps his wrist (unconscious habit, he doesn't even seem to realize he moved,) and the shadow dissipates. Percy feels his eye twitch. _(That could be you. RUN._ ) “That normal?” He asks.

Nico stops rearranging his fruit-bowl. Overfilled with herbs, smelling strongly of mint, and neither of those things are/were/will be in it. He blinks, something akin to owlish. Those hedonist eyes snap to him. Otherworldly. “ _Is what normal?_ ” Commanding, but kind, if that makes sense. His voice sounds distorted through the barrier between them. Low – Percy doesn't remember Nico hitting puberty – a marigold baritone that shudders through the shack's wooden skeleton. But muted. Like Percy's still underwater. Still rotting.

He gestures, wrist twirling all the way around and back again. It's a neat little trick he can do, now. Ghost powers. The ability to induce the heebie-jeebies. “Y'know.” He flicks a hand to the corner. The shadow is simply that; a shadow. “The thing. That you made go away.” The way he speaks is similar to a floundering fish. Gracelessly, but valiant. Nico only stares at him. “ _I didn't do anything._ ” Confusion colors his voice a shallow gray. (Percy swears he watches ash settle on Nico's lips.)

Frowning, Percy turns to stare back at the corner. All that's there is simply a shadow. Had Percy imagined it? ( _He's trying to trick you. RUN._ ) Something cackles just over his shoulder – he turns, and finds nothing. He turns again, this time to Nico. The kid has an eyebrow raised. Just to his left, a shadow distorts. Reaches out. Hand grasping, grappling, almost touches Nico's neck.

Then it's gone. Percy missed Nico's wrist this time, but he knows/knew. ( _RUN. RUN. RUN._ ) “There,” He says; too slow, he feels sick. “There, again. You just did it.”

Uncertain, Nico looks down at his hands. He wrinkles his nose; distasteful. Almost like he doesn't recognize it. But Percy recognized it. Artful hands, slender fingers and rough palms. Pianist fingers. Scarred, with bright-white-starlight nicks and marks. Dirt under his fingernails. “ _If you say so,_ ” Nico acquiesces. This time, Percy hears the gentle let-down Annabeth tried to baby him with. It's a different context, but it still makes his vision swim.

Percy wonders which one of them is crazy.

It makes a bitter chuckle swell in his throat.

Nico gives him another little look. A brief glance. But his black eyes are softened by amused fondness; friend to friend, or, as Percy's starting to sense, like an older sibling smirks at a younger sibling. Which shouldn't be fucking happening. Percy is older. Right? Right. Percy is _older_. Ocean-old, timeless. Right? So how can Nico, young Nico with his college-student-worthy weariness, manage to assume that position? Percy's been usurped! This is/was unacceptable. (It's not condescending, like Annabeth.)

“ _Are you tired?_ ” Nico queries. He's moved from the bowl to the cupboard. From what Percy sees, they're empty. Gaping masses of darkness that spills like brackish water onto the tiled floor. But Nico continues like this doesn't happen. Percy swallows, “Define tired.” And Nico just shrugs. Fucker. “ _Heavy_ ,” Nico supplies, “ _Weighed down, or._ ” Percy doesn't hear the 'or', because Nico slams his fist down on the counter-top.

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

A deep inhale, and Nico scrubs angrily at his face. Percy can't tell what's happening. But Nico turns around to face him, still with that easy smile. His eye looks a little red. Scrubbed at. (Percy's familiar with that sensation. Having to grit his teeth together to keep back a sob. It builds up slow, then bursts the dam, floods and takes out fucking everybody along with him. Except Nico invests in sea defenses.) “ _I dunno_ ,” Nico mutters, “ _Forget it. If you're tired, feel free to take a nap._ ”

And then he's gone.

Percy stares emptily.

(He wonders if Nico actually realizes that Percy is dead. Or if he was just expecting Percy to show up. It makes his head hurt.) The shack starts closing in minutely. The shadows flatten altogether. Puppets without strings. No puppeteer to keep them tense. It leaves Percy to his own devices. Not a good idea.

Hours pass. Five days, ten million years. Percy wasn't aware of how the time slipped. (Ten minutes, in actuality.) Nico finds him sprawled on the couch, arm over his face. Not asleep, but not awake. Percy listens to the kid wander quietly to sit at the window. The chair scrapes against the floor. The table rattles slightly; legs uneven. Percy smells sulfur and metallic obscurity. Candidly gruesome.

His wrist feels tugged; he moves his arm from his face. Percy watches the golden-blue, nearly black thread run back to Nico's throat. The tugging continues. They meet eyes across the space between them. Albeit, it's not much. It's a good couple feet, though. Nico nods, hands laced under his chin. Greeting.

Percy blinks away the bleariness in his vision. He sits up, leaning against the back of the couch, “Where'd you go?” Nico glances askance, before shrugging. His eyes follow something out the window. “ _Grabbed a thing. Don't worry about it_.” Flippant. Percy purses his lips, before nodding.

“Right,” He murmurs.

“ _Right,_ ” Nico echoes.

* * *

“Why am I here?”

“ _Good question._ ”

You'd think the Ghost King would have some idea why the fuck your soul is still scattered among Terra instead of safely underground in the afterlife. His bored tone makes Percy fucking boil inside. “Nico,” It's an attempt to sound stern, but when he can just peer down at you like a dog would a toy, it's hard to keep the conviction. His voice wanes into something softer. “Seriously. What am I doing here?”

Nico seems to genuinely think about it. His bites his lip, furrows his eyebrows, falls quiet. But the concentration absconds as quick as it appeared. He shrugged; his features smooth out again. “ _I don't know._ ” His hair bounces when he ducks his head. Stooped between his shoulders, hanging/hung low like a dog done bad. Sulking, but not for himself. Of course not. Percy can't think of a time where Nico ever did anything for himself. (Well, he can name a few, but they were in the lull of battle, during the quiet in-betweens. Nothing mattered then. If Nico wanted McDonald's, be damned he'd fucking get McDonald's. The only real time Percy can imagine him selfish was far too long ago, and had ended with a sword at a neck.) Nico sighs softly, craning his neck to look at the ceiling.

“ _Maybe you've got unfinished business_.” It's impossible to say that with a straight face. And yet, Nico manages. Percy doesn't. He snorts, before fighting back a smile. He raises an eyebrow, “...Unfinished business? Really?” Nico shrugs, finally cracking a tiny grin. “ _Yeah. Maybe you need closure._ ” And that's a sobering statement.

Percy didn't/doesn't understand how the (son of Hades, Ghost King, demigod,) kid manages nonchalance. Like it's not world-stuttering. He examines his nails idly, before wrinkling his nose and dropping his hand back into his lap. ( _He's only playing nice now. Be careful._ ) Percy rolled his shoulder, neck against the back of the couch. He frowns. “Why would I have -” _Killed myself_ \- “Y'know. If I had shit I still had to deal with?” Percy hisses. (The tenses bounce around in his head. Time has skewed.)

It's not a surprise that Nico's not great at consolation. The kid shrugs, eyes closed. In the mid-noon heat, he looks peaceful. Dead, but peaceful.

There's a waifish quality to Nico's skin that Percy struggles to get over. The blues and greens streaming under his skin. Shallows pooling in the crevices of his face. Yet, he glows. Shivers course through Percy's form. It doesn't feel natural. Or too natural. His mouth tastes dry, and he can't blink away. That is, until Nico opens his eyes again. He looks dead. _He looks dead_.

Exactly like Percy.

Who's the ghost?

“ _Suicide is a common resort for a lot of people with too much on their shoulders_.” It snaps/snapped/will snap Percy through a loophole. “What.” Nico stands, on his long legs. He stretches for the roof – muscles in his back shift. Sinewy. Tense. “ _I said -_ ” He flicked his wrist and fucking snatches something from a void - “ _That a lot of people decide suicide is a good answer when they lose control of their lives_.” It's said so blatantly, with so little care and so little condolence. You'd think, as a child of Death, Nico would/will have more tact.

Still, Percy appreciates it, in all honesty. Nico's no different than he was. He doesn't treat Percy any differently – alive or dead, in sickness or in health. But then again, Nico is a myriad of maladies and malign misconceptions. If anybody is willing to accept this abrupt change, it's Nico. It's a demigod. It's...whatever Nico was now. ( _He's too powerful, is what he is. He's going to fucking ruin you. RUN._ )

He focuses on the void-born something in those wrought hands. Nico takes a chomp out of it. Percy doesn't know if it's a heart or a fruit; the juices run slick-red, gralloched and visceral, along the marble column of Nico's wrist. Too many images torpedo recklessly through his head. The sword; slicing and dicing, cleaving and heaving, extension of his arm and the exertion coursing through his bicep -

“ _Hey._ ” Nico.

Those eyes.

Eye-to-eye and his ghost heart throbbed/throbs/will throb like a battle ram against a fortress. Percy feels raw. Splayed bare. Nico blinks – he's too close ( _protect your neck, dumbass, he's going to return the favor_ ) – concern clumps in his eyelashes, eyes shiny with a nameless regret. Percy can count the freckles on his face from this proximity. Could sit for eons, and find something new. His skin seems to shift; light reflecting in the bottom of a swimming pool. Percy can almost taste the scarlet bitterness staining his teeth.

“ _Deep breaths._ ” As if it's that easy.

“ _...Don't think about it too much._ ”

So Percy inhales and exhales, forceful, unrelenting, pushing through the sudden tightness in his chest. The ache eases. It settles after a minute. Maybe three. Maybe thirteen. Nico remains. A constant, in the shifting reality Percy couldn't understand. After a beat of silence, he asks: “This isn't a memory, right?” Because he needs to know. He's heard that you relive your entire life in seven seconds when you die. Maybe this is just that. He's reliving something he's already experienced, it's why the tenses don't make sense, it's why he doe _sn't know what day it is, when this happened, what's happening?_

“ _No_ ,” Nico decides.

“ _We're in the now.”_

It looks like he's put a lot of thought, to come up with that answer. (The participle snaps into place. Percy feels centered; the world is stable underneath his not-there feet, and the time is no longer something he has to despair over.) “We're in the now,” He echoes.

The smile Nico offers is worth it. It's minute. A quirk of his lips, the left-corner seam stitched upwards ever so slightly. It makes Percy feel like he's burning from the inside out. In a good way. In a way Annabeth couldn't make him feel. Not after everything that had happened. Percy feels twelve again. Falling into a territory that doesn't belong to him. Nico is a lone wolf; he has welcomed Percy into his domain. Just like Annabeth had. Except Annabeth was a lioness, more deadly, more astute. Nico just seems...placated.

Nico stands, licking the juice from his hand. ( _He's warning you. Leave. RUN._ ) The kid rocks on his heels – Percy notices the callouses formed, from boots or from barefoot wandering, who knows – before wandering back into the kitchen. It appears to be his safe place.

Percy sinks back into the couch. The obscure nattering makes him flicker his eyes all around the room. When nothing appears to be the cause, he lets his eyes close. The voices are only that: voices. And now, the shadows seem to whisper too. At least that's an excuse. He's not crazy. Not totally. He starts to feel himself drift into that in-between, when a sharp metallic sound slices through the silence.

His eyes snap open.

Nico cusses openly.

“ _STUPID FUCKING SNAKE-ASS BITCH_.” A dull _shing_ rings in Percy's peripheral. He turns, slow like molasses, to watch Nico swing his blade down onto the stove. It makes his heart stutter; excited. A glittering plume of gold wafts into the sunbeams. The blade is maliciously beautiful, tragically bewitching, perilously bloodthirsty. It makes Percy's hand twitch. The sight looks so... _domestic._ A knife on a cutting board. Nico's sword has always been an extension of himself, much like Percy to his own sword, and Nico manages to make the swing look clean and effortless.

The shadows thicken. They start to edge towards Nico, dimming the afternoon sunbeams. The kid's face is moribund, seething. He releases the blade; it falls into a blackness Percy can't name. Tension remains in Nico's shoulders, in the ramrod line of his back. Reddened seam of his mouth, sable flare of his eyes; Percy thinks distantly of Sally, in the kitchen, cutting Thanksgiving turkey.

Standing, Percy's legs lead him to stand just behind Nico's reach. His eyes flicker down to the stove. A pile of golden flecks glister in the returned sunshine. “What was it?” Small, that's what it was. What was it? Nico shrugs, idle, idyllic, “ _Cereste. Or viper. I don't know._ ” Curious. “I used to think you knew a lot.”

Nico snorts. Derisive. He's still shirtless. Still bedheaded, still sleep-soaked and balmy. His pupils, if Percy looks intently enough, are barely pinpricks. A muted pounding throbs along the wrist-thread. He'd forgotten about it, honestly. But it pulses. Softly. But fast. It takes Percy a second to realize it's Nico's own heart beating. Strong. Steadfast. Stinging. Percy winces at the sudden heat spiking in his wrist. Instinct; he tugs his wrist away. It's very easy to almost miss the hitch in Nico's breath.

Entranced, Percy watches Nico bring a red-sticky hand to trace the connection of his collarbones. The kid brushes it off easily enough. He blows away the golden remains of a snake. Casual. Callous.

Nico yawns and makes for the ladders. Percy remains in the kitchen. His eyes are glued to his wrist. The thread burns a stark white. He thinks of the sun. He thinks of the moon. (He thinks of Nico's pale-pallor-plight and the rotten bitterness lacing the seams of his entirety.) Percy plucks gently at the wrist-thread. Another solid pulse.

He hears the kid gasp from his loft-bedroom.

He decides this is something for another day.

* * *

As the day comes to a close, Percy finds Nico sitting on the porch steps. His eyes are faraway. Percy sits on the step below him. It makes Nico's attention cut to him like a knife. For a second, Percy sees an ire try to nestle in the cracks of his facade. It's gone as fast as it came. Settled and smoothed out. “ _You're not him_ ,” Nico whispers. It sounds like a self-soothing tactic. It leaves Percy confused. “I'm not who?”

For that, Nico only shrugs, and turns away.

Percy doesn't seem to appreciate the twilight like the kid does. It's all just blue into purple and white paint spatters that mean so damn little to him now. He can't feel the sentiment. Bob, Zoe...he can't bring himself to hurt over it anymore. But Nico stares like a timeless custodian of some distant realm. His college-boy domesticity retreats under a layer of old, old, old, and Percy watches his eyes gleam with wasted potential and what could've been a somebody in a different world, a different life. Fuck. He aches.

This kid. Percy swallows thickly, hugging himself. He huddles; small. Nico glances at him. His skin looks opalescent – vapid, like Percy's own translucent blue. He's reminded of...ghosts. Because that's all they are, really. In this moment, Percy watches Nico watch him and it all falls away.

“ _Did you ever stop blaming yourself? Before you died?_ ” Nico's voice carries the humdrum note of a king on his deathbed. It makes Percy loop a finger around the wrist-thread. It's an unnatural comfort. “Did I ever -“ He pauses. He can't take his eyes away from Nico.

Did he ever stop blaming himself? “I think so,” He mutters. The knit between Nico's brows lessens. “I think -” Percy leans back on his elbows, tears their gazes apart - “In the end, I got so tired of...carrying the blame, that I just.” He can't finish. Nico doesn't need him to. Gracious, like that.

“ _I'm glad_ ,” His voice reminds Percy of the creaking the shack behind them makes. Frail, weathered, but resonating. Whale songs. Percy yearns for the ocean. “ _Even if you had to die to realize...I'm glad. You didn't deserve that guilt._ ” It's too sincere. Too blunt. But Nico isn't looking at him anymore.

A hair-raising howl rattles through the barren. Nico doesn't flinch. Instead, he sighs – Percy watches the kid flick his wrist, and the shadows dance wickedly in the purple din. He doesn't feel that sinking ship in his stomach anymore. The umbra intrigues him; brings to his attention, how much Nico has grown, how much Nico has changed. “ _Don't look at me like that,_ ” Nico murmurs. He's still not looking at him.

Percy doesn't look away. He crooks a half-grin, “Like what?”

Nico's own smile is a mere twitch in the rising light of the moon. “ _Like_ that _, Jackson. Like I'm...worth anything. Stop it._ ” And Percy's smile slips off his face. The tension slowly leaves Nico's frame. Percy frowns. _“Don't look at me like_ that _, either._ ” Percy doesn't bother with a cheeky comeback this time. Instead, he knocks their shoulders together (his insides _spark_ when they _connect_.) Nico even sways with the movement. He's candid in the twilight. It's colder than it had been.

“You're worth just as much as I am,” Percy declares. Nico snorts, rolling his shoulders. He gives a soft _uh huh_ , and once again Percy can't see why he and Annabeth never became friends.

It hits him, then. He has so many questions. So. Many. About himself, about Nico. Where did Nico go? Why did he go? What happened between him and Cupid? Why did he feel like he had to cut ties? They bubble on his tongue, but he doesn't let them escape. Percy swallows, ducking his head. “ _Nobody is worth as much as you are,_ ” Nico says – it feels like repentance – an admittance to something Nico's always kept inside. It comes out with a rawness to it Percy's only ever seen in himself.

“Then nobody is worth more than a fuckin' dime, Nico.”

Nico snickers at that. He finds it funny, apparently. He shakes his head, mouth a curved line on his face. The shadows dance again; to an unheard beat. Percy feels it, though, in tune with his wrist. It's odd thinking about a pulse when you're dead. But Nico makes that normal.

“ _I guess. Whatever. Does it really matter, in the end?_ ”

Nico turns to angle his body towards him. Full attention. He cocks his head. The column of his neck is painted a brilliant white in the starlight. Sharp edges are accentuated. Percy feels helpless. Human. Nico is something extraterrestrial, something beyond a higher power. Percy feels a jump through his system – like he's about to be blighted, eviscerated, turned into stardust and carried away in the night breeze.

A flash of Nico's teeth in a wicked grin, expressive arch of an eyebrow. It's so different from the boy he knew. “ _I don't think it does, personally._ ” Nico stands, swings his arms, looks like moonshine (looks like the light in Annabeth's eyes, looks like the silver-lace of her tongue,) “ _What we are worth isn't up to us, in the end, but only to live up to it._ ” A bitter chuckle. “ _And, for some of us, that's less than a drachma or more than the entire world swallowed whole_.”

Percy feels the breath knocked out of his chest.

He stands. Suddenly he's scrambling, jogging after Nico. The kid's suddenly thousands of feet across the flats. “Wait – what?” Nico just laughs at him. The sound travels across the barren. He gives Percy a fond look, before snickering again, “ _Don't worry about it_.” Right. “You say that a lot.” Nico arches a brow, “ _And I mean it._ ” He starts strolling backwards, barefoot and all, arms spread wide, “ _Nothing to worry about out here. It's so -”_ He snorts, tips his head back and twirls on the spot, “ _There's NOTHING out here! It's so fucking far from everything, Percy, it – it's all mine!_ ”

'I finally found my peace, and without having to die for it.'

Percy finds himself smiling. He looks up at Nico, watches him drag patterns into the sand. The baked ground underneath is as malleable as the dirt would've been back in New York. Nico flexes his fingers; the next thing Percy knows, the ground is raising from beneath him. A pedestal. Nico cranes his neck to look up at him. Hands planted on his hips. “ _C'mon_ ,” Nico smirks. His voice is clear out here. Clearer. Less water warping his baritone, and the intensity of it hits Percy full-force. “When was the last time you've talked to somebody?” Percy wonders.

Nico falters for a second. Then a brief mania flashes across Nico's features. He shrugs, helpless, and lets himself fall back onto the ground. He looks blissful; like he's stargazing. “ _Well, you'd be surprised. Before you showed up, I talked to a shit ton of people, actually. I hate most of them._ ” Percy crouches on his earth-pedestal. “You do?” When Nico's face darkens, Percy frowns. “ _Yes._ ” And the statement sounds final.

Percy prods. He's not good at taking the hint. “Who were they? Why?” Nico rolls his eyes to him. All joy is gone in an instant. “ _Do you really want to know?_ ” Percy doesn't hesitate. “Of course I do.”

Nico snorts, “ _So you're very happy to know that I got a visit from your father, from Chiron, from_ my _father? Over your death?_ ” He sits up, frowning, “ _They all came, mourning or angry or both, expecting me to do something about it, y'know. To bring you back._ ” Nico's eye twitches. The shadows solidify, writhing. Percy swallows.

Before anything happens, Nico snaps his eyes shut and takes a deep breath. “ _Nevermind._ ” Percy blinks; reeling. “What? No, tell me.” Nico stands. Apparently their fun is over. Nico snaps his fingers; Percy collapses onto the ground. “Nico -” He tries for stern, but Nico's not listening to him anymore.

Percy growls, stomping after the kid. “Nico! Tell me -” Nico gives him a _cold_ look. (His eyes are glassy, his throat swallows tightly, and Percy watches the wrist-thread burst a vehement red. It scalds at the base of the kid's throat.) “ _Enough._ ” His mouth seems to sew itself shut. A rigid command runs through him.

He doesn't understand what happened, but Nico does. He looks stricken. The kid curses softly, before shaking his head, “ _It's...late. We can talk in the morning._ ” But there doesn't seem to be any intent that either will sleep tonight. As Nico's shoulders slump, Percy's mouth unseals from its clasp.

Hugging himself, he follows the bare footprints left in the sand hastily. The cold starts to prick at him; it feels like things are watching his every move. But the emptiness of the desert is all he can see. It's too dark for him to understand anything else. However, he does notice a slight glow to the area. He'd seen it during his time following the thread, when the world went dark, and he'd been his only source of light. It's a faint blue; barely noticeable. Nico tilts his head every now and again; as if admiring it. The iridescence seems to shine brightly in Nico's eyes, where in the world around them, it does not.

When the door closes behind him, he breathes, “...Sorry.”

Nico pauses. Back to him, he shrugs. “ _It isn't your fault.”_

'It's been too long since I had a normal conversation with somebody.' Percy twitches. He glances over his shoulder; nothing. He glances to Nico. The kid seems to count his own breaths, before heading for the ladder. This time, Percy follows him up.

The loft-space is as spartan as the rest of the shack. Nico's bed is a miserable cot slotted under the roof-window, and a fruit crate acts as a nightstand. Percy looks at the piles of books, the loose drawings, the way the shadows curl up like tired dogs on the floor. Percy watches Nico situate himself by the bed. On the floor. Percy cocks his head. “Not going to bed?”

Nico shakes his head. “ _I...have some reading I need to do._ ” Percy squints at the book he picks up. It's got a dark cover, the words muddle together but shimmer. He feels himself jerk when it flips open. Nico gives him a brief look, but starts reading. Percy wanders to Nico's bed; gets himself comfortable. “Don't you need a light?” The kid smiles, tired, “ _You'll do._ ” Percy's unsure whether it's a compliment or a statement.

He lets his eyes close.

He wakes up, later in the night. A nightmare sits on the back of his hands, but there's no fear in it. He doesn't scream, like he used to, the images that smattered like gunshots across his vision don't elicit the same reactions they used to. He merely blinks his eyes open and gasps.

The loft is still dark. A beam of moonlight comes from the window. Nico's moved since Percy last saw him. The kid looks up from a different kind of book in his hands. This time, Percy realizes there's a colored overlay over the page. Smart. Percy blinks away the dregs of horror-memories, and sluggishly drags his gaze back to Nico. It's as if he'd actually been asleep.

Nico, at this moment, reminds him of a dog. Fuck, he misses Mrs O'Leary. He sits alert, eyes trained on him calmly. A silent reminder that there is no danger out here. (The sleep-drunk part of Percy's mind giggles at the idea of Nico morphing into a proud borzoi, with a slender snout and wistful eyes.) Nothing is said for a long moment.

Then, carefully, Nico blinks at him: “ _You okay?_ ” And it's the most caring thing Percy can remember ever hearing right now. He feels eyes prick up. He rolls to hide his face in the pillow, nodding mutely.

There's a dull thud of a book being closed. The floorboards creak; Nico's weight shifts from the far corner to the bed, and he crouches down. Eye-to-eye; in the dark, Nico's eyes are soft but cunning. Percy huffs. Then yawns, before twisting back onto his side. “Yeah,” He mutters.

“ _Just a dream_ ,” Nico assures.

Percy nods, “Just...a dream.”

* * *

Too long passes, and Percy fits into the every day of Nico's life pretty well. Somehow, he doesn't get bored, despite the lack of television, console, or any of those good things. He never had them in the first place. Nico proves entertaining enough – when his temper allows for it. Otherwise, Percy is left to sprawl on the couch while Nico disappears for random intervals, to return with a laden shadow that spills whatever he'd scavenged on his trips out.

One day, Percy murmurs, “Where do you go?”

The late-noon heat makes him sluggish; a cat in a sunbeam. Nico snorts as he passes the back of the couch. He shucks his heavy jacket off, shaking its contents out onto the kitchen counter. Percy watches herbs, berries, a pouch, a salt-shaker, and another heavy book slump from the void. “ _What do you mean?_ ” And this is Nico's coy beat-around-the-bush. Percy was used to it back then, and he's used to it now – especially now that Nico's settled enough by his presence to fall into his old habits again.

The boy busies himself with organizing fruitlessly. His fruit-bowl has a habit of emptying mysteriously, but the cupboards always drip the same tar-black viscousness, and the fridge is always gaping. Percy doesn't understand where the herbs go. Or the berries, the fruits. Whatever.

“When you go and come back with -” He gestures to today's spoils - “...that.” Nico pauses for a moment. It's taken a while for Percy to open his eyes to the way he does that. How he stills and blinks and flexes his hands in a way that reinforces that the void-creatures stay at bay. Percy's learned to stop asking about them. “ _There's a little town...somewhere around here. Has a...goddess, looking after it, and._ ” Nico shrugs jerkily. That's what he does when he skirts a topic that makes Percy stiffen. So Percy forces his muscles to relax, and watches Nico – towering, broad-shouldered, and _youthful_ – bow his head and avoid his eyes like a meek little doe. It's far different from Percy's first week here. But it's familiar.

They still haven't talked about the elephants crowding in the room.

Percy doesn't think there'll be intent to do so – a mutual agreement.

“Okay,” He sighs. He sinks deeper into the couch cushions. 'Goddess' rattles around in his head like a forbidden curse. He wrinkles his nose. Nico clears his throat, wandering back from the kitchen. He's got his hands deep in the pockets of his jeans. They're too small for him, hug his hips a little too low.

Percy switches subject: “When are you going to get new clothes?” Nico gives him a weary look with his soft-edge eyes, mouth turned into something close to a pout. “ _When it doesn't require me jumping into the city._ ” Percy snorts, “Hermit.” Nico doesn't argue. He just purses his lips. One of his roughed hands come to palm sternly at his chest. As if trying to ease a pain. Percy doesn't comment.

After a moment, Nico asks, “... _Would you like to go to the city?_ ”

Percy blinks, watching Nico peer at him through his eyelashes.

“I mean,” He shrugs, twisting on his side to look at the kid, “I don't mind. I'm – happy here.” (“I don't know if I could face the people,” Is what he doesn't say, but Nico's knowing quiet makes Percy feel like he just screamed it into the nothingness.) The kid nods, distracted. Percy ignores the flicker of his wrist. It's so normal, at this point, the whispers have stopped mattering to him. He has a more liable excuse now. He doesn't have to feel sick and paranoid, if the shadows _really do_ mutter amidst themselves.

And he is happy here. Here, there are no constant reminders – of the people he failed, and the ones he left behind – and maybe that's exactly how Nico intended it to be. It's so... _Nico_. There's nothing here, but there's _Nico_ ingrained into the walls and _Nico_ put into the obscurely rosy fairy lights strung along the slats.

Percy can breathe here. Nobody's expecting anything of him. Here, he can exist, and as Nico's taught him through resistance: no need to question. Sure, it's really against what a _demigod_ should be doing, but. Percy's not a demigod. Percy's _dead_. Percy doesn't have to care about any of that anymore.

Yes, he has regrets and so many mistakes to his name. He's selfish. There are people who don't deserve the devastation Percy has left them, but those people are strong and they will move on without him. Right? He watches Nico.

Nico survived. Barely, sometimes, but he made it work. Percy watches the kid play with a pillbug. He snorts when Nico crushes it between his fingernails. “You're so gross,” He admonishes. Nico flicks the pillbug-bits at him, smirking, “ _And you're any better? I saw you picking your nose and wiping it on my bed this morning._ ” Percy snickers, shrugging.

The afternoon is as bright as they get, and the flowers (with too many god-heavy stories behind them,) bloom brilliantly. He's noticed Nico slipping out in the hour before sunrise, watering them in their troughs. It seems to be a routine for the kid. Percy can't help but wonder, if Nico hadn't built himself this faraway, seemingly inter-dimensional world for himself, where would Nico be now? It's a question he refuses to ask out loud. He's not sure if he'd appreciate the answer.

“Yeah, well -” Before Percy can defend himself, a tingle runs through him. The shack stills; Percy watches Nico frown at a space just over his shoulder. It all happens in the span of a second, and then a voice breaks through the lull.

“ _NICO DI FUCKING ANGELO_ -”

Nico picks up his boot and throws it over the back of the couch. Percy sits up when the tingling feeling lets him go. He blinks, owlish. “Was that Jason?”

The look on the kid's face is just short of furious. He takes a deep breath. Then he nods. Once. Like it pains him to do so. (The Roman's voice was warped, just like Nico's is; muffled, sound traveling through water. It all...sounds the same.) Percy sits up, stretching. As if it'll rid himself of the itch. “...Nobody's tried to IM you before.” Nico gives him a considering look. The 'should I tell you?' look. He glances askance. “ _Hazel tried, and succeeded. Jason just tried now._ ” He swallows, voice quietening, “ _It's...seventy-five to twenty-five chance of getting a connection through_.” The kid gestures vaguely to the shack, “ _We're far enough from..._ anywhere _, that connection is a struggle._ ” He nods. It doesn't make sense, but Nico doesn't look like he wants to talk about it.

Nico sighs. “ _Give it an hour, and there'll be another IM._ ”

He's right. Percy counts slowly in his head, and roughly an hour later – the sun having moved a notch across the sky – Jason's warbling voice cuts through their quiet. “ _NICO!_ ”

The kid sighs, placing his mortar and pestle down on the little table. He'd been sitting there, peaceful, grinding herbs and basil, muttering softly under his breath. Charms, maybe. Whatever he'd been muttering, his shadows had licked at his heels eagerly – and if Percy wasn't crazy, the shadows had waned a shade of blue in the sunlight.

That damned tingle runs through him again. His head fills with fuzz, his eyes are too heavy to keep fully open. He makes out Nico giving him a cursory blink, before sighing once more. “ _That's me_ ,” Nico agrees airily. Percy doesn't know if it's just him, but a static spits in the air.

Jason lets out some sort of curse Percy doesn't recognize. He feels like he's stuck to the couch. If he tries to move, it's a gross sensation of pins and needles. Numbing. His eyes find Nico, but not Nico's eyes. His tongue is too heavy in his mouth. Nico looks as antsy as he feels.

“ _Listen here, you little shit -_ ”

“ _How mature of you, Jay_ _-”_

“ _Don't act like you're exempt, di Angelo, sit the fuck down and listen up_.” There's the curt bark of an order, but Nico clenches his fists and refuses. Percy can only see the boy in his peripheral, head too heavy to move. Nico hisses something – dead language, too cursive, strange accent – and the darkness starts creeping in. He clears his throat. “ _If you've come to yell, why don't you grow some balls and do it in person, no?_ ” Jason stammers something, until grudgingly huffing, “... _I don't know where you are to do that. I would've already, if I did._ ” Nico snorts. Bemused.

“ _Fuck off, Grace. I have shit to do_.”

“ _Like what? Fucking hide in the middle of nowhere, being miserable? You have FRIENDS, y'know! You LEFT us, and didn't even come back for the funeral!_ ” Nico snarls, “ _So that's what this about? A fucking FUNERAL?_ ” Percy grits his teeth. His wrist feels hotter than rage, hotter than unthinkable clusters of hate, and a stuttered hiss escapes his teeth. Nico pauses.

There's a harsh movement through the air – disrupts the static, makes Percy's head spin – and suddenly it's all gone. The pressure vanishes. The tingling stops. He sinks back into the couch, boneless. “What was that?” He croaks.

Percy peels himself from the couch to throw an imploring look at Nico's back. “Nico, what was that?” Nico is silent for a long moment, before he seems to gather himself. “ _The....the energy probably...interfered_.” One of his colder-than-death hands comes to clutch over his nose and mouth. Percy watches his other hand grip the back of the couch. The kid seems to double over slightly. A shudder runs through him, before a deep breath. He straights up.

Turning, Percy sees Nico's reddened eyes. He gives Percy a wan smile, before sinking down to the floor. He leans against the arm of the couch. Percy can only stare at his mess of hair. His voice sounds clearer than it had before. Clearer than Jason's: “ _...It – your...energy is different to mist-related...stuff. If that makes sense?_ ” Percy hums. It doesn't make sense. But he also doesn't understand how he can touch solid things with Nico here, and only gently brush items when Nico is gone. So he just nods. Nico chuckles bitterly; it sounds watery. _“The IM doesn't agree with you. So you try to take...reinforcement from me, but because of..._ ” Nico trials off. He seems to have lost himself.

Percy pauses, “What do you mean – I take reinforcement from you?” Oh god. Has he been hurting Nico this entire time? He sits up straighter, watching Nico intently. “Nico?” The kid wipes a hand down his face, before shaking his head, “ _I mean. Because of my...ability. With ghosts. I work like a battery. Mostly._ ” He flaps a careless hand, reclining to lay stomach-up on the floor. His breathing his harsh. Percy wonders if Nico is about to cry. Well – he doesn't _wonder_ – but he wonders if Nico will cry in front of him.

Oddly enough, he really wants to see Nico cry.

He mentally slaps his own wrist. That's terrible.

Sitting at Nico's feet, Percy plucks his wrist-thread. Nico jerks a little. And, like he's done every other time, he moves a hand to sooth the joining of his collarbones. Percy smiles to himself, propping his chin up in his hand. Nico huffs, gives him an odd look, before sitting up. Knees to his chest. He peers down at Percy.

“Hey Nico?”

“ _Yes Percy?_ ”

They stare for a moment. Percy sees the faint glow of his own eyes in Nico's, the green-blue shimmer in a pool of black. He feels his breath still for a second. “Are you afraid to buy new clothes because you don't want to see how much you've changed?” Nico stares; blank; guards shuddering shakily around him. “ _W-What kind of question is that?”_ Percy shrugs. “Well, are you?”

Nico rolls his shoulders, before glowering at him, “ _No._ ”

“Then why are you so – _against_ buying new clothing?”

The kid bares his teeth at him a little, before standing and returning to the lonely little table-for-one at the window. The mortar and pestle are natural in his hands. “ _I'm not_ ,” His tone is that of a parent huffily explaining to a child. Percy snorts. He doesn't remember when the dynamic switched. It's...not something he's against. He misses being young. He misses his mom scolding him. He misses his mom.

“ _I'm just..._ ” The wrist-thread hums a sallow green.

“Scared,” Percy supplies. Then hums, “Nervous?”

It's quiet for a long moment – the air between them thickens, the shadows tinted blue as they shift restlessly at Nico's feet. A tremor judders through the shack's foundations. A deep breath; the tremors cease. Nico blinks his eyes open; brown, not black. They dazzle an enticing amber in the sun. Very quietly, nearly inaudible, Nico admits: “ _The last time I went into a city, I had a fucking panic attack. Your mom had to save my sorry ass from getting trampled._ ” Percy's chest tightens. “Wait – what?”

Nico shrugs, but his face softens. The look he offers is something just shy of sympathetic. Percy's not sure if he appreciates it or not. “ _I...got asked. To help arrange your funeral._ ” Percy feels something knock the breath out of him. Nico suddenly avoids his gaze. He cages his shoulders in, steeples his fingers. “ _So, I had to go to...New York, to. To. Visit. Your mom. Sally._ ” His words become stilted. Even in the underwater-wobbling, Percy can hear Nico's voice waning into a tear-rough simper. “ _And there were too many – I mean – the noise, and, and, and._ ”

The kid squeezes his eyes shut.

“ _I learned the hard way that I can't go into largely populated areas anymore_.” Nico sighs. He grips and tugs his curls like he does when he's frustrated. Worries at his lip. Percy purses his own, before carefully trying to meet the kid's eyes. “...So you were at my funeral?” Nico nods. “But Jason said -”

Nico cuts him off. Brutally, but earnest. Like he needs Percy to understand. “ _NO -_ ” Panic, and he forces his voice to lower - “ _No, Jason didn't see me there. None...of them. Did. But I was there. I left. Flowers._ ” Percy watches the details. The purple rings under Nico's eyes, how his eyelashes flutter with every stutter and stammer. How his piano-hands twitch, like he wants to gesture, but has long-since repressed the urge. Percy lets a small, bitter smile crawl onto his face. It doesn't seem have the desired effect.

“Okay.”

“ _Okay?”_

“Mhm.”

His soul is bored into by those impossible eyes. Then Nico snatches his gaze away. “ _Okay,_ ” He mutters. Then the kid stands, brushes off his tattered jeans, and makes for a corner. “You just got back,” Percy says weakly. Nico shrugs, gathering his shadows neatly. “ _I'll be back in a few minutes. I need to. Check. Something._ ” Percy lets him go.

Nico returns, and finds Percy yelling at a cactus wren from the porch. Mostly about how the tawny little thing had been bothering Nico's beloved flowers. Percy jerks at Nico's chuckle. At the mere sound, the wren flees. He turns, propped against the porch railing. Nico's leaning in the doorway, amused, and regained his charm. Percy grins. “ _What did the bird ever do to you?”_

Percy doesn't have any real answers. The quiet had just...gotten to him. But Nico seems to know, anyway, and his eyes crinkle a little around the edges. “Nothin', I guess,” He grouses. The kid snorts. He peers down at Percy; he looks really, really pretty in the scarlet sunset.

They stand in silence, turned to said sunset. It's something Percy's seen countless times since he's been here, now, and it's nothing particularly new. But it's new in a different way. A different beauty. A different sentiment. The sunset back at camp stood for _home_ , for a while, then it turned into _dead-end._ The sunset here, _Nico's_ sunset, makes Percy think of...lesser things.

Nothing equates to these moments. The sunset here is a glorious flame roaring on the waterline of the sky. Nico's sunset is simple: _the end of all things._ And it's indescribably perfect.

“We should get a TV,” Percy mutters.

Nico huffs, “ _I'll keep it in mind, yeah?_ ”

* * *

Nico tells him it's been three months since he died, but Percy has a feeling Nico's just as unsure about that statement as he is. It's endearing, though. How Nico tries to keep tabs for him.

Sometimes, the things Nico do remind Percy of Annabeth. It could be just the amount of books cluttering the loft, or the fond eye-rolls, or the way he cocks his head and all his curls fall to one side. Except, Nico doesn't make him feel dumb, and while Nico's not the best at involving Percy in his plans, he tries when he remembers.

Every now and again, Nico digs out a different kind of book. It's different, because it's not got words in it. His occult books are dark and murmur in dead languages, make Percy feel sick, so Nico doesn't get those strange books out often. The other books are pages and pages of tight-together words; those books make Nico bring out that colored sheet of plastic. But the different book...Nico draws in that one. A sketchbook. Percy hasn't dared look in it, because this sketchbook likes to talk too. It talks in colors and it hums when Percy drags a finger over the cover. “It likes you,” Nico chuckled, when Percy told him. (It's more like Nico humoring him, because he can't hear the books natter and chatter endlessly.)

There are periods where Nico wont smile for days at a time, and those periods, Percy finds Nico distant. He can't blame the kid. That's when he wakes up and finds Nico red-eyed and throat-tight. He learned years ago that pushing only pushes Nico away. So he doesn't push. Outside of those times, Nico is...pleasant. He's grown up, and embraces himself. Even the dark little moments of mania that make his eyes look too much like his father's. Percy's proud of him. How far he's come.

He's just sad that Nico's had to give up so much to get to this point.

(“ _If I hadn't been exiled, I think I just would've killed myself, honestly.”_ )

(“Exiled?” Then Nico turned away from Percy; not explaining a thing.)

Right now, he's in the middle of some _Futurama_ rerun, when Nico trudges into the house. Yes, a house. Because _shack_ is demeaning, and when there's been so much work put into this place, it's only right to threat it as what it is: a home. A house.

The kid looks like he's at his wits end. Percy makes room on the couch. Nico all but collapses, not moving when his head thunks onto Percy's shoulder. “...You okay?” He stares, inquisitive, at the shopping bags left at the end of the couch. It takes a moment for Nico to catch his breath.

Percy realizes Nico's hands are trembling. His entire being is trembling. Wide-eyed, shallow breaths, unseeing. Percy's hand comes to rest on Nico's thigh; the closest thing to him besides his face. “ _No,_ ” Nico croaks, “ _But I will be._ ” His wrist throbs like nothing else; he glances down, feels the constant _drum drum drum_ of Nico's heart pulse through him.

His eyes draw back to the bags again. There are one or two big-brands he recognizes, but the rest are plastic or paper, most likely from a local store. He watches Nico gather himself.

“ _I – I went. Got some. Clothes._ ”

“...So you went into the city?”

Nico nods. Percy nods. “Wow,” He murmurs. Nico starts to sit up, body stiff. “ _You've been – been nagging at me since. So._ ” The kid gestures vaguely to the shopping bags, before slinking to the floor and resting his head back on the seat. Percy finds himself chuckling. Nico's like a kid tuckered out after soccer practice; boneless, lulling, but energetic all the same. Still, he worries his lip, “...You didn't have to do that, y'know. At least – not alone.” But Nico's already letting his eyes slip closed.

Percy snorts.

“Do you want some water?” Percy asks. He doesn't get an answer. Percy leaves him on the floor, strolling towards the bags. If he doesn't move them now, no doubt he's gonna fall face-first over them later.

He's still not quite sure how that works, since...ghost-physics, and all. Then again, he's not sure if he wants to know. As long as he has it, he's not going to complain.

After nudging the bags to sit by the table-for-one, Percy looks back to Nico. The kid's out cold. A smile cracks across his face – unexpected – and this warm feeling bubbles through him. His feet make no sound as he walks. It's something Percy finds distracting, sometimes, when it's quiet and he waits for his regular footfalls and comes back with silence. It's the small details. But otherwise? It's...as if he never died. But he _did_. And Nico seems to be indifferent either way.

And that begs the curious question -

Did Nico cry when he figured it out?

Did Nico start crying when Percy died?

It seems like he wants to sometimes, but Percy's seen nothing like it since he's been here. Well – there was that one time, in the beginning. But he'd been. Fine. After that. Percy cocks his head. “Nico,” He whispers. The kid is dead to the world.

The sun paints him in beams of red. (He thinks of screaming, guttural and raw, and blood goes flying, blades are clashing, his heart pounds to the adrenaline-filled mantra – _don't die don't die don't die_ , and he watches demigods fall around. Warriors, _children_ , the entire battlefield is _death_ and he's in his element, he's in his element he swears, but he's _not_ , and there's another cry and his heart _breaks -_ ) In red, Nico looks like a tragic paragon. His wrist-thread tugs; it's a soft blue, pale and barely palpable, but gentle.

( _You should kill him now. Before he can kill you_.)

He snaps his neck so fast it feels like he died again, but his head twirls round and he falls on his ass. There's nothing there. Nothing there. He watches the shadows – nothing is there. They coil and lounge, like a cat flicking their tail. At rest. At ease. Percy swallows, scratching his neck. “Just nothing.” It sounds like a false hope. Maybe Annabeth was right. Maybe he did need a psychiatrist.

Except. He doesn't. HE DOESN'T! Doesn't need any fucking professional, because he's _not crazy_ , there's _nothing wrong_ , and he's perfectly fine. Perfectly fine...like this. Dead. _Dead_. _**Dead**_.

Just how it was meant to be. No responsibilities, no expectations, no GODS and no SICK FUCKING MIND GAMES. No, it's not Elysium, or any other death, but it's not being _alive_ , and that's all that matters. How is he here? Why is he here? He doesn't need to know. He doesn't need to think about it. He's just here. In the now. He doesn't need help, he's not crazy, he's not _alone._ He has...the kid he failed, lost, regained, lost again, lost, lost, lost – and found. So he's not a total fucking failure. He did something. He found someone. Someone close. Somebody that welcomed him with open arms, like an old friend, like somebody he hasn't _hurt_ and _hurt_ and _hurt._

( _Nico must be planning something. That's the only reason he's 'forgiven' you_.)

He swallows thickly. Curls his arms around himself, knees to his chest. His neck throbs dully, but even then – it's not painful. Eyes wandering to the window, he watches the sun finally sink below the windowsill. The sky drapes itself in sangria, blood, guts, visceral obscenities, trauma -

“I'm not crazy!”

He claps a hand over his mouth. Did he say that? No. No, he didn't say that, must be Nico, did Nico wake up? Right on cue: “ _...Percy?_ ” He blinks. There's a hand on his shoulder – icy cold with a firm grip despite the accompanying quivering. Percy cranes his neck back, looking up at Nico; wide-eyed.

“Hi.” Nico gives him a short look. He sighs eventually, removing his hand. Percy instantly wants it back. “ _...Come help me put my crap away,_ ” Nico says, in lieu of concern. Percy appreciates it. He'd be too much like everybody else if he started badgering Percy.

Grover comes to mind, and a dim little place beneath his breastbone starts to ache. Grover meant well. But he was too much, and that's why Percy shouted until his throat was hoarse. And now he and Grover will never talk again. Will never make amends.

That seems to be how Percy ended a lot of friendships.

But Nico? He has yet to ruin things with Nico. It's nice.

His feet drag, soundless, and the bags in his arms crinkle. “Paper?” He snarks. Nico – show off, carrying three of the five bags in only one arm – shrugs, “ _Better for the environment_.” Percy frowns, “...What about the trees?” To that, Nico flippantly states: “ _We can grow trees faster than we can fix global warming._ ”

Percy blinks. He peers back down at the brown paper. “What?” Nico only snorts, rolling a shoulder. He pauses at the ladder, hoisting his bags up one by one. “ _Forget it. I guess...you weren't in school for that, were you? No..._ ” The kid continues to mutter to himself, and Percy hears words like 'anthropocene' and 'disgusting fucking humans', but decides to stay out of it. Percy has no idea what he's talking about.

But then Nico says something about the 'sea-level rise' and Percy's interest is piqued. And that's how the rest of the evening goes. Nico talks animatedly between folding fresh clothes, hands wild and eyes wild and words coming faster than he can run a monster through with his sword.

By the end of it, Percy's still not entirely 100% on what's happening in the world, but Nico does well to explain the most basic point: plastic is bad, and the human race is starting to find fossilized plastic. And that's bad. And Nico is sick to death of just about everything. In his words: “ _Yellowstone needs to fucking erupt already, then the earth can start fresh._ ” And...Percy felt that. He felt that resonate deep in his core. The sentiment is shared.

He falls asleep on Nico's bed, like usual. It only then occurs that he's seen Nico sleep _once_ since he's been here. But he's too far into slumber by that point to do anything about it. Nico's voice makes good background noise to fall asleep to. Calm...deep...soothing...

“ _Sweet dreams, Percy._ ”

Percy's out like a light.

* * *

He wakes to a thunderous noise rattling through the shack. His eyes snap open, nerves frayed almost immediately. Percy's chest tightens; he looks for Nico – the kid's fluff of bedhead disappears down the ladders, and Percy feels his eye twitch.

Legs sleep-limp underneath him, he stumbles for the ladders. Nico doesn't notice, his form fleeting. Percy struggles after him. His eyes won't open all the way, the sun is too bright in his eyes. A yawn cracks his jaw wide open. “W-Wha's go'n on?” Nico doesn't reply.

It's then that Percy realizes just how cold it is. He watches the window start to collect frost, Nico's breath coming out in pluming clouds of harsh, ragged, _angered_ breath. The shadows thrash wickedly, twist, warped, and close in. Percy blinks the sleep from his eyes. His teeth chatter together. His wrist-thread feels like a heated needle piercing his skin. “Nico?”

But the door's being torn open, a hinge thrown loose, and Nico snarls, “ _What the fuck are you doing here._ ” A buzzing, crackling, familiar energy bursts from the other side of the door. It happens in slow motion. A body comes barging through, then they're on the floor – rolling, grappling, snarling – Percy feels sick. The shadows thicken even more. Suffocating. Blinding. So dark Percy feels dizzy.

Jason, he realizes. That's when he sees the brewing storm clouds outside. The door gapes; a rectangle, unleashing that gray-white light inside. The sky out here is usually blue, usually so colorful. Now all Percy sees is clouds. They crackle with lightning. Maybe a heat storm – maybe _not_. Most likely _not_. He feels his eye twitch. Jason or Zeus, he doesn't care, it _needs to_ _ **go**_.

He turns back to the two idiots scrapping. Feet cemented to the ground; he can't move. Numbness travels up his legs, grips his churning stomach. Pins and needles in his hands; heavy; where did his voice go?

Nico's eyes are livid. His face contorts with a snarl. Teeth bared, angry, but Jason is no less. A cloud lingers in his head. It's cottony, makes it hard to think. But fists are flying, Nico's throwing Jason across the room and cursing in that dark twisting language again, and Jason's glacier eyes fly open as if Nico just wished Jason to tear his own throat out. Maybe he did. Maybe he didn't. Percy doesn't know.

“What the fuck is going on?!”

It ends as quick as it started.

Nico's got his back to the floor, palm wedged solid under Jason's jaw; neck craned back so far Percy worries that if Nico fully extends his arm the blond's head will snap clean off. Their teeth are still bared. Tension sits in the room. Undeniable. Unflinching.

Jason's eyes widen to the size of a god’s greed, raised fist falling lax at the sight of Percy. Thunder booms outside. It seems more bark than bite in this moment. Nico goes even more rigid than before. His gaze intensifies on the slacked jaw of Jason's mouth.

“ _Nico, tell me you_ _ **didn't**_.”

“ _I didn't_ _ **what**_ _,_ _you fuck?_ ”

The Roman pales incredibly. Percy shuffles, unsure where to rest his eyes. He doesn't remember a time where he's been scrutinized like this. In awe, and in horror, and in disbelief. Well – once, by Annabeth, when she realized just how much of a monster he could be if he really wanted. But that was then, and not now, and right now, Jason looks like he might pass out.

“ _...Percy?”_

Nico breaks the moment with a harsh elbow to Jason's throat. There's a choke, and the blond rolls onto his side. The kid sits up, still heated, but remains silent. He leaves them both for the kitchenette.

Percy is left to watch Jason fixate on him. But Jason keeps calling to Nico, voice breathless and disbelieving and _hurt_ \- “ _Nico you_ _ **said he died**_ _, what the_ _ **fuck**_ _is this._ ” And Nico? Nico simply starts filling the water jug, like he does every morning, and readies to water the flowers. (Percy startles, because Nico is _taller_ than Jason, Nico can look down his nose at Jason the way he does at Percy, except more malevolent and malicious, and void of the playful tint in his eyes.) “ _He is_ ,” Comes out; certain.

Then he shoulders past and out the door. Percy listens to the soft sounds of Nico’s boots in the sand. Water pouring. (Water is something Percy still loves the sensation of; how it makes his fingertips tingle, and the coolness of it is refreshing out here. The faucet doesn’t have a source, but it still drips.) “I am,” Percy supplies. Jason jolts.

Tight like rope around his neck, the tension hangs heavy. Silence looms; Jason’s breathing is loud. “I’m...dead.” Percy shrugs. He scratches his neck. Jason just shakes his head. His eyes glisten, but he ducks his head before anything slips out. “ _Then...th-then why are you here?_ ”

To that, Percy doesn’t have an answer. He shrugs, helpless. His stomach churns. Nerves frayed, lips bitten, feet cemented. There’s nothing he can do, really. Shadows flicker, and while Percy doesn’t even flinch, Jason all but shrinks in on himself. “ _Whatever_ ,” Jason gives him a lingering look, before storming out of the house. His feet are heavy on the porch, waning and creaking. Percy lets himself sink to the ground. He presses his back against the wall, eyes pinned open and mouth too dry. His wrist throbs painfully.

His mind is running too fast for him to keep up. Sleep still tries to claw at his conscience. Lulling and luring, in the purples of the not-quite-there sunrise. A cottony kind of absence knits neatly into the panic tightening in his chest, and a voice in the back of his head – something like Nico, but more persuasive, more crooning – whispers _maybe you should go back to bed_. Percy can’t fight it. His feet start dragging him back to the ladder. Cement blocks, and his hearing makes him wonder if he’s underwater, but he can breathe and the air is dusty and sun-thick. The boys’ voices drift away.

Percy finds Nico’s bed and collapses.

* * *

He wakes up to the sun glaring through the skylight. Voices are muffled through the floorboards. Soothed shadows are cool in the heat, and one of them teases at his fingertips. A smile tugs languidly at his face. Why...was he even so anxious? So wound-up?

Then his eyes snap open. The cotton is whisked away.

Didn’t Jason come here? _Isn’t Jason here right now?_

A shadow solidifies in the corner of his vision, turns into a soft-shaped hand, but Percy is already to the ladder and fumbling his way down. “Nico?” He calls, “Nico?!” Oh god. Oh god – what if – what if Jason took him back? Took him away, left Percy here, left him in the _dust_ , left him to _die for real_.

“ _Percy,_ ” Nico replies easily. He’s stepping in from the porch, dusting the sand from his jeans, and sniffing through a bloody nose. Percy stills. “Where’s that from?” Nico doesn’t ask him to specify. Nico doesn’t answer.

“ _I punched him_ ,” Jason answers. He steps in after Nico, anger in the set of his jaw. His eyes are still brewing, discontent, contemptuous, but Percy can’t bring himself to care. It’s the _betrayal_ in the lines of his face that make Percy broil with confusion.

“Why.” It comes out thinner than ice. Nico may not care, Nico may be somewhere between lackadaisical and so-irate-he’s-indifferent, but Percy is strung taught. The mast of a ship on its last support. And Jason just _shrugs_. It makes saltwater crawl up his throat.

There’s a warning in Nico’s steps, though. The way his boots set firmly in the floorboards. Heavy air, cold, colder than the nights. It makes Percy’s core shiver. “ _I think after he disappeared for three years, it makes sense that I get a hit in._ ” And this isn’t the Jason he remembers, the Jason that was tender to him after he and Annabeth’s breakup. This Jason has sky-slate eyes. His words are crisp like a frosty winter morning, his stride is confident as ever; he’s a wolf pup running around in a hellhound den.

Percy doesn’t know how to respond to that. Three years? Wasn’t it just – one? He stares for a moment. Then turns away. “Oh.” Nico chuckles from the kitchen. It’s more bitter than arsenic. Still, he doesn’t try to defend himself. Something knots uncomfortably in Percy’s gut. “...Oh.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Jason snarks, before finally raising his eyes. Percy blinks back at him. The few inches Percy had gained after he turned eighteen are gone. He’s shorter than Jason once more. Jason seems to realize this, and switches his gaze down a couple notches. It makes the Roman shift on the spot. Uncertain. Unsure. Unfamiliar, prowling strangers’ territory. He’s lucky Nico doesn’t have a shotgun.

Percy frowns, before turning away. He strolls after Nico; his footsteps feel lighter now, more tentative. Not ingrained into the floorboards like they had been for the past days. He feels Jason’s eyes on him. A constant. Makes something inside him tick uncomfortably. ( _don’t turn your back on him_.)

“Why is he here?” He whispers. Maybe he leans in to Nico’s space, maybe he casts an imploring glance; Nico is a cold wall to his question. He roots in the fruit bowl until he finds a pomegranate. How, Percy will never know. Nico never buys pomegranates. It’s always herbs, basil, hate, slightly rotten apples and the spinal chord of some unfortunate thing. But Percy isn’t phased anymore. He watches Nico bite into the fruit; skin and all, those sharp teeth and that riveting juice. It’s a fresh crunch that splits through the air.

“Why is he _here,_ Nico?” He tries again.

“ _Why do you think he’s here, Percy?”_

No, he doesn’t have an answer for that. A glance over his shoulder – Jason is nearing, now, bold enough to come and lean on the half-wall bordering the back of the L-shape in the counter arrangement. “ _You haven’t aged a day,_ ” Jason says it with a sneer, but it comes out like a compliment. Like your estranged aunt; pinching your cheeks, smiling, _my, well haven’t you grown?_ Except it’s the opposite. Nico stills at the comment. Percy doesn’t understand the sentiment.

He stares at Nico for a moment. He’s aged. The kid is no longer a kid; broad in the shoulders, whipcord muscle, sharp features; better temper. Dark under the eyes, darker _in_ the eyes, consternation in his brow. He’s aged. _He’s aged_. It’s not like he’s immortal – _oh gods._

Icy eyes find his. There’s a bemused smugness there. That subtle quirk in his mouth – stretches his scar – makes him more sinister with the inclination of his head. Nico’s shadows do not flatter the Roman demigod. Those cold eyes snap back to Percy’s companion. His question is loaded: “ _Have you told him yet?_ ”

Nico bounces back easily. Airily, with an eerie saccharine lacing, “ _Why, whatever do you mean?_ ” But Nico’s not great at playing coy. He chomps once more into his pomegranate. A few seeds clatter on the counter.nPercy’s transfixed: the red juice slips down his wrist again. Clings to his chin. It looks deadly.

“ _Oh, I don’t know. Everything?_ ”

Nico smirks at that. Crushes the pomegranate in his hand, presses it against his granite counter-top. It looks like a crushed organ in his hand. Percy swallows thickly; looks back and forth, back and forth. ( _they’re hiding something from you_.) “Can we stop talking like I’m not here?” He snaps.

Neither of them pay him any mind.

“ _Why would he care? He’s_ _ **dead**_ _, Jason._ ”

Percy curls a finger around his wrist-thread, tugs, _tugs_ , and grits his teeth when Nico’s eye twitches and nothing else. He watches the thread – a waning bruise-toned green – pull at the base of Nico’s throat. “What are you two talking about?” He huffs.

Jason just gives him a snort, before pushing away from the counter. “ _All I’m saying_ ,” The blond starts, “ _Is that it’s a little unfair -_ ”

“ _Don’t preach to me about_ _ **unfair**_ _, Jason._ ” It’s derisive, offhand, flippant. Entranced, Percy watches Nico. How his lithe form saunters. How his mouth carves his words from marble. The delicate flick of his wrist, the way the shadows try to grapple at him. The way his eyes are starting to shimmer. Percy swallows. His mouth is dry. Throat taught. “ _It’s ironic that you, of all people, moseyed your way on up here to fucking drag me down through a_ _ **guilt-trip**_.”

Jason’s fists are clenched; trembling. He bares his teeth a little, “ _Yeah well -_ ”

“ _WELL NOTHING!”_

The ground shakes.

Dust starts pluming up in gusts, disturbed, and the house’s foundations quiver once more. Nico snarls, bringing a hand to his face. Still stained with pomegranate juice. He shakes his head – deranged? Mad, like a confused dog – “ _Life’s unfair, gods are unfair – the fucking decisions you make are unfair, somehow. To somebody, anything you do will never be fair. There’ll always be somebody that thinks you’re unfair._ ”

Sharp pains start spiking through Percy’s wrist; a consistent throb, the ache of...a little boy. Percy grits his teeth, forces himself to stay quiet. This isn’t his argument. he’s done fighting other people’s battles.

Jason hisses something intangible, like a curse, like a prayer, and Percy feels something curl sourly in his gut. So many questions. Rattling around, one after another – _what are you talking about? Why are you acting like this? Where did Jason go? Where did Nico go?_ _ **WHO ARE YOU?**_

A static fuzziness starts to fill his head. Before his eyes, his hands start wavering. Their solidity wanes. His breath catches in his throat; some kind of gasp – his knees feel weak.

“ _Get out._ ” Nico snaps. But he’s not looking at Jason, no, he’s pinning Percy to the spot with his not-there eyes. “ _I said get out_.” The static grows stronger. The blond says something else. The world falls into an amalgamate of broken hearts, tears, capsized ship and he’s man-overboard. Nico’s void-voice makes his entire being hum. A malady. An undermining melody; whale songs.

A door slams shut. Percy falls to the floor. White noise drips from his ears, hands shaking and grappling for something, _anything_ , what is this hell? He can’t see. Can’t see at all. It’s pitch black and the light is swallowed, it’s getting warmer, the light is gone the _light is gone and no god can save him now -_

“Percy, I need you to come back now.”

It’s a command that resonates in his bones. Before he can figure it out, he’s back in the shack. Warped wood under his hands. Settling dust. Morning sun through the window. Cool hands on his shoulders; piano fingers, hard palms. Percy chokes. “ _There you are,_ ” Nico praises.

( _But what happened before that? What about the broken piano keys he had for teeth, the screaming that laced like a harmony, the command that made his bones snap?_ WHERE DID THAT GO? The clarity was there, was intoxicating, and all Percy’s ever wanted is to hear somebody and to UNDERSTAND THEM.)

“ _There you are,_ ” Nico repeats; a statement, this time. He gives Percy’s shoulders a single squeeze, before standing and walking over to the sink. Distantly, Percy hears the water run. Full-force, sloshing over the side of the sink. It’s an odd sensation against his palms. Like a cold-burn. It used to feel so benign. Percy shivers. Bites his lip, and shivers. Blinks, breathes, shivers. He releases another sigh: the water stops.

When Percy tries to pick up the water, tries to reach for it with his mind, tries to will it into the air – nothing happens. It remains on the floor: a puddle. He feels his eye twitch.

“ _Why don’t you go sit down,_ ” Nico suggests, “ _I’ll clean this up_.” It seems less and less like a suggestion. But neither of them realize it. (Nico’s eyes are still shimmering. Inhuman. But his voice is soft, his voice is a balm, and Percy follows with ease.) His limbs move of their own volition – feet dragging across the floor, and then to the couch, to the dusted cushions and the sunlight streaming through the window. This will do. He can do this.

An indeterminable amount of time passes. Nico returns; his hands and mouth drip a translucent red-pink. Maybe he tried to wash it off; the juice, the blood, the mess. Maybe it was just a knock-on effect.

“I felt like I couldn’t move,” Percy croaks out. The kid’s eyes bore into him; ringed in a tyrannic type of blue-gold, but it fades quickly. Before his very eyes, Percy watches Nico return to _him_. To step down from whatever pedestal he climbed onto in Jason’s presence. Those umbra eyes swallow the sun.

Nico crouches before him. Steeples his fingers below his chin, and gives him a curious look. Percy feels a guiltless fondness crawl up his neck. “ _You couldn’t move,_ ” Nico echoes. He seems to consider it for a moment. Then that irritation fleets across; the guilt in his grimace, the brief flash of admonishment in his teeth. “ _I’ll work on it,_ ” He says, and that is that. Percy furrows his eyebrows.

“...What was that?” He mutters. He needs to know. Why did his mind turn into clouds, why did his hands fall away in the wind, why did his tongue turn to ash, why _why_ _ **why –**_

“ _I think you have a problem interacting with other auras._ ” Nico mutters. He falls into mad hatter muttering, gibberish, talking about _variables_ and _interfering energy stores_ and _your sensitivity_. Eventually Percy just closes his eyes. He doesn’t understand, but maybe he doesn’t need to.

Later that night, Percy watches Nico across the loft-space. The kid sits by his towers of books; he thumbs through those dark, whispering, hissing pages. That green overlay crumples at the corners. Percy watches Nico concentrate, slave over reading, with a furrow in his eyebrow and a knot in his throat. The wrist-thread glows in the dim. God, he wishes Nico could see it. Could marvel, like Percy does. But Nico appears blind to it.

If Percy focuses, he can see all the other strings too. How they all tie around his collarbones; forming this ethereal, whimsical sort of necklace made out of knots and fanning out like something magnificent. Percy’s is the strongest color. It changes frequently, but for now it’s colored a gentle apricot. The others are dull. Maybe they mean something. Maybe they don’t. they’re countless; too many, too fucking many, and they all pulse out of sync. Percy feels his lips curl at the sight. Something green spikes in his gut. “What are you reading?” He asks eventually. Anything to push the thoughts away.

Nico’s eyes snap up to him. Unblinking. They are dark and terrible and oh gods Percy would let Nico snatch him into that void if he wanted. “ _About ghosts,_ ” The kid admits. He ducks his head, but his hair is no longer long enough to hide his adverted gaze. “ _To try and figure out just what kind of anomaly you are_.” It sounds like a compliment, so he takes it as one.

“ _Rest, Percy_ ,” Nico murmurs. Honeyed, but acidic like lemons. Curt and crisp. Beautiful, haunting. In the moonlight from the overhead skylight, Nico is inhuman. He is something else. Something Percy is afraid of. His skin doesn’t glow, but it doesn’t take on the shadowed blue everything else does. He just. _Is_.

Percy’s eyes fall closed.

* * *

“So you’re immortal?”

He doesn’t look immortal. Doesn’t strike Percy as anything resembling an immortal. (Except he does, and you know it. _You know it, and you’ve been blindsided. He LIED TO YOU_.) But maybe Percy’s still wearing rose-colored glasses. Still sees Nico like he’s fourteen, like he’s hurt and alone and hateful. Maybe he is. Maybe he isn’t. Who’s Percy to judge?

But right now? Nico looks mundane. In a pair of black shorts, and boots; shoulders starting to turn a little pink from being in the sun. No tan, though.

“ _Something like that,_ ” The kid allows. He rifles through the toolbox. It’s loud in the quiet; metallic, grating. Percy watches a pillbug skitter away from Nico’s boot. “What do you mean by that?” Percy asks. It’s a little like a demand – in the way a four year old demands hugs, or ice cream, or a kiss goodnight. But Nico barely spares him a glance. Percy decides Nico probably wouldn’t be good with kids.

“ _Saying I’m immortal is like chalking up Lovecraft’s work to Cthulhu and nothing else._ ” Percy blinks. Nico pulls out a hammer, and steadies its hooks against the wonky nails in the porch steps. The wrenching motion grates against Percy’s ears. How the iron whines. How the wood groans. His eye twitches. “What – wait, what?” Nico shrugs. He’s...oddly focused on his task. “Nico are you comparing being gifted immortality to leveling up in a video game?”

“ _Yes, essentially_.”

“You total _nerd_.”

Percy snorts, rocking against the porch railing. “Oh my god.” He shakes his head; marveling, rolling his eyes. Nico chuckles distractedly. Then in one rough jerk, pulls the rotten plank of wood from the stair frame. Throws it somewhere behind him.

“ _But, yes. I’m immortal_.” Percy catches his eyes then. They’re dark with contempt, resentment, and Percy wonders if Nico had been in a lose-lose situation. Death or Immortality. Either way, Nico would probably end up in the same position. He wouldn’t die, even if he was sentenced to death. He frowns. “Do you like it? Not dying?” It’s an odd question. Comes out odd. Sounds odd as it hangs in the air.

Nico’s quiet for a moment. He works intently on the second plank. “ _No_ ,” Nico mutters. “ _No, I don’t. It goes against...anything, any rules I hold myself by._

“ _I’ve – I’ve never been afraid of death, or of dying. I think...ha, I think I was ready for it by the time the counsel was held. It just felt inevitable. I’d had a dream the night before. Of getting s_ _truck by lightning. Or combusting. Or..._ ” Nico gestures loosely with his hammer. “ _I don’t know. But. No, it feels like...I’ve been robbed of something I’ve been promised since I was born_.”

Percy blinks. He nods, pursing his lips. Nico yanks another plank of wood away. The kid is meticulous; removes a plank, replace it with a newer, sturdier kind of plank from a bundle he shook out of his jacket after one of his many hours away.

A crow awks from somewhere overhead. Nico’s cobalt eyes flicker up to it, almost in acknowledgment, before continuing with his refurbishing of the porch steps. “Y’know,” Percy starts. He waits until Nico looks up at him. “I never pegged you for a DIY kind of guy.” The kid shrugs, ducks his head in that abashed kind of way. He twirls the hammer in his hand. “ _Well, gotta get stuff done somehow_.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

* * *

“ _ **I thought you would’ve wanted this.**_ ”

The voice jerks through him. Yanked from his slumber. Feels all his not-there bones rattle, and something deep inside his chest starts writhing. Shaken, Percy sits up in Nico’s bed.

“ _ **You love him. Is this not what you wanted?**_ ”

It’s a god, for sure. Percy knows that much. The voice has that warped quality that everything living does, but there’s an underlying tone of clarity, like two voices speaking simultaneously, like two identities fighting for an equilibrium. His core feels cold. Colder than...anything. Nothing compares to this.

His feet start carrying him across the loftspace, to the ladders. But he hesitates; he shouldn’t hesitiate, Nico is down there, Nico may need help, Nico’s temper is questionable these days, what if –

“ _HE WANTED REST, HADES._ ”

“ _NOT WHATEVER THE FUCK THIS IS._ ”

Percy freezes. Nico. His hands curl around the slats. His throat feels tight. Tighter still, when he hears Nico start pacing. That shift in air, in weight, in reality – how his vision swims, but holds fast. He wants to call out. To ground him. To reach Nico, reach wherever he is, to reel him back.

Yes, his blood boils. He wants to shy away from Hades. From any god. But his priority stands stronger. Percy purses his lips. His wrist is searing; it is black – blacker than hate, than rage, than loathing. That doesn’t scare him. At all. What scares him is that Percy can’t feel a heartbeat. He stares; wills a heartbeat to come to life. But there is nothing. Not even that comforting pull.

“Nico?” He calls. And, like it did last time, everything stills. The air feels heavy. So heavy, unsurmountable weights pulling it down, suffocating, like the volume of the ocean on top of him. Percy shakes from the pressure. It’s not holding up the earth, but it’s still strenuous.

“ _Leave_ ,” Nico hisses. It’s not directed at him.

“ _ **If that’s what you wish.**_ ” And then he’s gone.

Percy didn’t realize how dark it was until light peels away the shadows. The skylight shows a world full of blinking stars and a suffering moon. Just emerging midnight. Percy feels a twitch run through him. He takes a deep breath – is panting from the pressure; mouth dry, tongue heavy, eyes wide. His head tips down. He peers down the ladder, sees Nico craning his neck to look up at him through the ladder hole.

“ _Percy,_ ” Nico breathes. It sounds like a hymn. Like he’s stuck in a reverie; misted eyes, that are impossible voids gilded. For a second, Percy’s mind fleets to Hazel, to Thanatos, with their aureate eyes, but knows that it’s not quite a perfect fit. Nico blinks up at him; Percy feels like he’s staring into a fond nothingness.

“Nico,” He echoes.

Nico quirks a smile.

Later, when Nico’s eyes are his own again, and his teeth aren’t stained with the lacquer of wretched divinity, Percy muses, “Your dad sounds different.”

“ _He does, does he?_ ” Nico’s distracted; he’s replying more for politeness than actual interest. It amuses Percy. How he still maintains those old habits, how he can be a polite little boy from the thirties when he doesn’t think about it. He continues; whether Nico is listening or not, “It’s...clearer. But messy, at the same time. Like two voices.”

Nico flicks his wrist, and the shadows simper in their crannies once more. The kid twists his mouth – so maybe he was listening – before setting down his pen. A half-made grocery list sits on the table. “ _Like Roman and Greek sides?_ ” But that’s wrong, so Percy shakes his head, “No, more like. One’s muffled, the other’s talking into a microphone.” Nico looks particularly confused by that. Scrunches his nose. Scratches his cheek, eyes to the side as he thinks. “ _Might have something to do with him...being, uh..._ ”

He gestures. Loosely. Vaguely. His lips pull back in a half-snarl half-grimace, eyebrows furrowed. “ _I don’t know how to explain it in a way you’ll understand_.” And it’s not saying Percy’s _stupid_ , it sounds more like a general thing, so Percy keeps his hackles settled. “Okay,” He says. Nico nods. Turns back to his list.

Percy won’t ask about what happened.

It’s an invasion neither of them will like.

So instead he asks, “What’s the list for?”

And what he doesn’t expect is for Nico to announce, “ _I’m going to paint the walls, and maybe the loft, too, and fuck, maybe even the roof_.” Percy blinks at him. “Okay?” The kid fidgets; like he needs to explain, so he hurries to explain, and he starts talking with his hands in a way that Percy has watched him repress since he’s been here. “ _I...thought I was okay with the shack how it is. It’s home, it’s good enough. Whatever. But..._ ” And those eyes are beseeching, cautious, looking into him for any sign of...whatever it is. Discouragement, maybe. Percy smiles. Nico quirks a small grin, and then nudges him. They connect. They spark. Percy feels warmth seep through him.

“ _You’re here now. I want to think less about myself, more about_ both _of us._ ” Nico snaps his fingers, and jabs his pointer on his list, “ _And I’m thinking blue. Or yellow. Whatever color you want_.”

Percy stares at him for too long. Shocked. Touched. Loved. that’s what it is, that’s what he’s been seeing – the despair, the _love_. He smiles; it feels too tender for one in the morning, too harsh for one in the morning. But it fits. Nico smiles back at him. Crooked and a little wrong. Manic.

“Blues and greens.” Percy points to the wall where the window fits.

“And I want you to paint a wave on it.” Nico’s artist hands tremble.

**Author's Note:**

> okay so i know a lot of questions get asked but dont get answered, and there are a lot of issues that are unresolved - they're kinda meant to be, and is sort of meant to emphasize that whilst Percy isn't in elysium he is in some sort of carefree get away from the living real ( _cough_ as seen earlier on, when Percy described Nico's shack as a realm of its own _cough_ ) and the participle thing in the beginning is meant to sort of focus on Percy's inability to figure out just where he is in the world, if not also clue in to how some individuals with ADHD/ADD may have trouble with time...if not grossly exaggerated for the sake of obscurity. 
> 
> though, i am aware that some parts my be confusing, and i dont have enough characters to explain it in the notes (trying to explain it in the fic would sort of defeat the purpose) - if yall have any questions, dont be afraid to ask; i'm happy to try and answer where i can :) hope yall liked it


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